How Farmers Are Utilizing Blockchain to Modernize Agricultural Commodity and Trade Operations

Four Agribusinesses to Utilize Blockchain to Modernize Agricultural Commodity and Trade Operations

Four agribusinesses – Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), Cargill Incorporated (Cargill), Bunge Limited (Bunge), and Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) – are turning to blockchain technology in a bid to modernize agricultural commodity and trade operations. The agribusinesses have been inspired by the fact that blockchain offers immense opportunities to increase efficiency and transparency for customers.

Technology to Automate Operations

The four companies are focusing on a workable technology that will help automate oil seed and grain post-trade execution process, considering that they previously employed a highly costly and manual process. By eliminating the efficiencies in supply chain courtesy of blockchain technology, the firms will enjoy shorter document-processing times, more transparent contracting visibility, and, of course, reduced wait times.

Their long-term goals are to drive greater reliability and efficiency, specifically improving the quality of data and documents.

Company CEOs on the Move to Blockchain

The CEOs of the four companies were exited to announce the move to blockchain, with all of them expressing optimism of what the new technology will offer them.

The CEO of LDC, Ian Mclntosh, said that the company was impressed by the first transaction which is curried out on blockchain, as it proved the technology has the capacity to enhance their efficiency. In his own words, Mclntosh said that:

“In January this year, LDC completed the first agricultural commodity transaction through blockchain, which showed the technology’s capacity to generate efficiencies and reduce the time usually spent on manual document and data processing. By working with the industry to adopt standardized data and processes, we can truly harness the full potential of emerging technologies to improve global trade.”

David MacLennan, the Chairman and CEO of Cargill also had great words to say about the blockchain technology and how it would impact their business, customers and farmers. He said that:

“Agriculture has always been a technology industry. Farmers and our customers expect us to deliver innovations that make them more efficient, effective and profitable. We embrace this as an opportunity to better serve the industry and ignite innovation through new products, processes and partnerships.”

Bunge’s CEO Soren Schroder had the following to say:

“We expect an industry-wide initiative of this nature to be able to accelerate improvements in data management and business processes, and bring much-needed automation to the industry. Promising technologies will not only provide synergies and efficiencies for ourselves, we believe they will prove vitally important to serving customers better by laying the foundation to enable greater transparency.”

The CEO of ADM Juan Luciano said that, by working together, they will able to simplify their operations and get rid of any errors they’ve been experiencing. He said that:

“We’re pleased to join the effort to foster modernization and standardization of data and documents in the global agribusiness value chain. By working together to design and implement a digital transformation, we will bring hundreds of years of collective knowledge and experience to simplify processes and reduce errors for the benefit of the entire industry.”